Almost time

Through one of the art events I attend (either Drink-and-Draw or Sketchbomb, I forget which) I met Ryan Cicak, who introduced me to the 10x10 event at the Sacramento International Film Festival. That's a category for 10 minute shorts, produced in 10 days. I loved the idea and resolved to enter the competition this year. Having never made a short film before, I decided to do a dummy run as soon as my exams were over, to see if I really could complete something that didn't burn your eyeballs down to the optic nerve, in just 10 days.

Well, yesterday was the last exam. My plan is that this weekend I will ask my wife for the same initial conditions they pick from a hat in the festival:
* a genre
* a famous line from a movie (like "we're going to need a bigger boat")
* two props
My movie must include all these.

My plan is to do a computer animation. The big hurdles I face are:
* I've never anything more than render tests
* I have $0 budget and only my home computer
* I still have a day job, so it's evenings and weekends only
* It's just me doing everything
* On top of the animation, I will post 1 blog entry for every day of the project

While this might sound a little crazy, I have been thinking it through and I do think it's achievable. Things I have working for me:
* I have blender (the open source 3d animation, compositing, and kitchen-sinkinator) and have been studying it for a while.
* I plan to use either monochrome or very limited palette
* I plan to use a lot of digital paintings for backgrounds/mattes and heavy use of compositing small parts rather than large renders
* The render size will be small (I'm thinking 640x480, possibly with matte's to give 16x9 aspect ratio) and if I can't make the full 10 minutes, I'll settle for anything over 4 minutes
* I have FL Studio for sound effects, vocal track and music
* I intend there to be no character dialog, but a narration track
* I have Gimp and a tablet, which I shall use for cut-outs and texturing

Though I plan to spend 10 days making the film, I'm allowing an extra day of setup and also a day of release/publicity. If I don't complete it within the 10 days, I'm going to allow myself up to another 10 day extension, with the theory that if I do it the second time around, I can be up to twice as efficient with the experience gained.

I think the hardest part though, will be the writing. Neither writing nor storytelling come naturally to me, yet writing is the one component that can trump all the others. But I'm hoping with the nervous energy and pressure of the 10 day deadline, I can come up with something.

So it all starts on Saturday. Wish me luck!